Smoking

30 Nov

Posted at 14:10h in Author Interviews, CDC, Smoking
MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Darryl Konter Health Communications Specialist, Office on Smoking and Health at Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Medical Research: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Response: Tobacco use is the leading cause of preventable disease and death in the United States, resulting in more than 480,000 premature deaths and $289 billion in direct health care expenditures and productivity losses each year. Despite progress over the past several decades, millions of adults still smoke cigarettes, the most commonly used tobacco product in the United States. Cigarette smoking among U.S. adults declined from 20.9% in 2005 to 17.8% in 2013. Among cigarette smokers who smoke daily, the average number of cigarettes smoked per day declined from 16.7 in 2005 to 14.2 in 2013, and the proportions of daily smokers who smoked 20–29 or ≥30 cigarettes per day also declined. However, an estimated 42.1 million adults still smoked cigarettes in 2013. Moreover, cigarette smoking remains particularly high among certain groups, including adults who are male, younger, multiracial or American Indian/Alaska Native, have less education, live below the federal poverty level, live in the South or Midwest, have a disability/limitation, or who are lesbian, gay, or bisexual.

22 Sep

Posted at 14:49h in Author Interviews, Occupational Health, Smoking
MedicalResearch.com: Interview with: Girija Syamlal MBBS, MPH , Epidemiologist Division of Respiratory Disease Studies National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health CDC, Morgantown, West Virginia CDC/NIOSH/DRDS Morgantown,WV 26505 Medical Research: What are the main findings of the study? Dr. Syamlal: During 2004–2011, of the 141 million U.S. adults, 20.7% were current cigarette smokers. Smoking prevalences were higher among men (22.8%) than women (18.3%). In both men and women, cigarette smoking prevalence varied widely by occupational group. In certain occupations, the prevalence of smoking was three times greater than the Healthy People 2020 goal that aims to reduce cigarette smoking prevalence to 12%.

15 Aug

Posted at 09:26h in Author Interviews, Smoking, Stroke

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Helene Nordahl, MS, PhD Department of Public Health, University of Copenhagen Copenhagen, Denmark. Medical Research: What are the main findings of this study? Dr. Nordahl: The combined effect of low educational level and smoking on the risk of stroke is the most surprising finding of our paper. In other words, we found that...

09 Jul

Posted at 10:21h in Author Interviews, JAMA, Smoking
MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Coenie Koegelenberg, MBChB, MMed (Int), FCP (SA), MRCP (UK), Cert Pulm (SA), PhD Associate Professor: Pulmonology Stellenbosch University & Tygerberg Academic Hospital MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Coenie Koegelenberg, MBChB, MMed (Int), FCP (SA), MRCP (UK), Cert Pulm (SA), PhD Associate Professor: Pulmonology Stellenbosch University & Tygerberg Academic Hospital Medical Research: What are the main findings of the study? Dr. Koegelenberg: The aim of this study was to evaluate the efficacy of combining varenicline and a nicotine patch versus varenicline alone as an aid to smoking cessation in a double-blind study design in a larger group and with a longer assessment period than has been studied to date. It was found that the combination treatment was associated with a statistically significant and clinically important higher continuous abstinence rate at 12 weeks (55.4% vs. 40.9%; P=.007) and 24 weeks (49.0% vs. 32.6%; P=.004), and point prevalence abstinence rate at 6 months (65.1% vs. 46.7%; P=.002). The present study was not adequately powered to fully assess safety and tolerability endpoints, but the results suggest that adverse events were balanced across treatment arms, except for mild skin reactions that were more frequently observed in the nicotine patch group (14.4% vs. 7.8%, P=.03).

29 Jun

Posted at 12:02h in Allergies, Author Interviews, BMJ, Smoking
Dr. Wojciech Feleszko Department of Pediatric Respiratory Diseases and Allergy The Medical University of Warsaw Działdowska Warsaw, PolandMedicalResearch.com Interview with Dr. Wojciech Feleszko Department of Pediatric Respiratory Diseases and Allergy The Medical University of Warsaw Działdowska Warsaw, Poland MedicalResearch: What are the main findings of the study? Dr. Feleszko: We combined data from nineteen population-based cohort studies of 24 000 children and we found that household exposure to tobacco smoke after birth has immunomodulating effects.  We demonstrated an increased sensitivity to allergens, measured by serum IgE and skin testing which may contribute to the increased development of allergy in children exposed postnatally to household tobacco smoke.

21 May

Posted at 10:14h in ADHD, Author Interviews, OBGYNE, Smoking
MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Nathalie E. Holz, MA Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Psychotherapy Central Institute of Mental Health, Medical Faculty Mannheim/Heidelberg University, Mannheim, Germany MedicalResearch: What are the main findings of the study? Dr. Holz: Using data from a prospective community sample followed since birth, we investigated the impact of prenatal maternal smoking on lifetime Attention-Deficit/ Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) symptoms and on brain structure and inhibitory control assessed with Magnetic Resonance Imaging in the adult offspring. Those who were prenatally exposed to tobacco not only exhibited more ADHD symptoms, but also showed decreased activity in the inhibitory control network encompassing the inferior frontal gyrus as well as the anterior cingulate cortex. Activity in these regions was inversely related to lifetime ADHD symptoms and novelty seeking, respectively. In addition volume in the inferior frontal gyrus was decreased in these participants.

24 Mar

Posted at 22:21h in Author Interviews, JAMA, Smoking
Pamela Ling, MD MPH Associate Professor, Department of Medicine Director, Tobacco Control Policy Fellowship Center for Tobacco Research and Education University of California San Francisco San Francisco, CA 94143-1390MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Pamela Ling, MD MPH Associate Professor, Department of Medicine Director, Tobacco Control Policy Fellowship Center for Tobacco Research and Education University of California San Francisco San Francisco, CA 94143-1390 MedicalResearch.com: What are the main findings of the study? Dr. Ling:  We followed a sample of smokers from a nationally representative panel for one year.  We found that there was no difference in the rate of quitting between smokers who used an e-cigarette and those who did not. Put another way, smokers who had used e-cigarettes at the beginning of the study were equally likely to have quit smoking one year later as those who did not use e-cigarettes. There was no relationship between e-cigarette use and quitting even after taking into account measures of tobacco dependence (number of cigarettes smoked per day, how early in the day a smoker has his first cigarette) and intention to quit smoking.

23 Feb

Posted at 12:35h in Author Interviews, CHEST, Pulmonary Disease, Smoking
Chunxue Bai, MD & PhD Director, Shanghai Respiratory Research Institute Professor of Medicine, Chairman, Shanghai Leading academic discipline Chair, Chinese Alliance against Lung Cancer Vice President of Respiratory Society, Chinese Medical Association Editor-in-Chief, Translational Respiratory Medicine (Springer) Editor-in-Chief, International journal of Respiration (China) Editor-in-Chief, Perspectives of Respiratory Medicine (China)MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Chunxue Bai, MD & PhD Director, Shanghai Respiratory Research Institute Professor of Medicine, Chairman, Shanghai Leading academic discipline Chair, Chinese Alliance against Lung Cancer MedicalResearch.com: What are the main findings of the study? Dr. Bai: Recently, we found a dilemma phenomenon that the incidence of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and lung cancer has remained high in southwest China despite the 1976 National Stove Improvement Program for indoor air quality. However, little information is known to the public about a regional endemic related to Chinese waterpipe smoking, which is different from the Arabic waterpipe. The Chinese waterpipe has been traditionally misconceived as less harmful for three reasons:
  • (1) no charcoal was used in contrast to the Arabic waterpipe,
  • (2) tobacco smoke passed through the water as opposed to cigarette smoking and
  • (3) smoking through a large volume waterpipe could “improve lung function.”
In our study, we provide robust results that the large volume Chinese waterpipe use and exposure are associated with the elevated prevalence of COPD, which have been identified by epidemiologic, physiologic, radiology, and toxicologic findings for the first time.

14 Feb

Posted at 13:21h in Author Interviews, BMJ, Mental Health Research, Smoking
MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Gemma Taylor MSc MBPsS Doctoral ResearcherGemma Taylor MSc MBPsS Doctoral Researcher and Paul Aveyard and PhD MRCP MRCGP FFPG Professor of Behavioral MedicinePaul Aveyard and PhD MRCP MRCGP FFPG Professor of Behavioral Medicine Fellow of Wolson College Primary Care Clinical Sciences The University of Birmingham Birmingham United Kingdom MedicalResearch.com: What are the main findings of the study? Answer: Smoking cessation is associated with improvements in mental health compared with continuing to smoke. The effect sizes seem as large for those with psychiatric disorders as those without and are equal or larger to effect estimates of antidepressant treatment for mood and anxiety disorders.

12 Feb

Posted at 01:07h in Author Interviews, Breast Cancer, Cancer, Smoking
MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Masaaki Kawai MD, PhD Division of Public Health Sciences, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center Seattle, Washington MedicalResearch.com:  What are the main findings of the study? Answer:  Ever-smokers had a 1.3-fold increased risk of breast cancer. They also had a 1.4-fold increased risk of ER-positive breast cancer. Current/recent smokers with a 10 pack-year history of smoking had a 1.6-fold increased risk of ER-positive breast cancer.

14 Jan

Posted at 23:14h in Author Interviews, JAMA, Ophthalmology, Smoking
MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Birgitta Ejdervik Lindblad, MD PhD Department of Ophthalmology Örebro University Hospital Örebro, Sweden MedicalResearch.com: What are the main findings of the study? Answer: We have investigated the association between smoking cessation and risk of having a cataract extraction among 44 371 Swedish men aged 45-79 years. During 12 years of follow up we identified 5713 incident cases of cataract extraction. Smoking cessation significantly decreased the risk with time. Men who currently smoked more than 15 cigarettes per day had a 42 % increased risk of cataract extraction compared with men who had never smoked. More than 20 years since quitting smoking, men who had smoked more than 15 cigarettes per day had a 21% increased risk of  having a cataract extraction compared with men who had never smoked. The effect of smoking cessation was observed earlier among men who smoked less than 15 cigarettes per day but more than 2 decades since smoking cessation the risk had not decreased to the level of never smokers.

29 Oct

Posted at 10:51h in JAMA, Smoking
MediclResearch.com Interview with: John W. Ayers, PhD, MA Graduate School of Public Health San Diego State University, San Diego, California MedicalResearch.com: What are the main findings of the study? Dr. Ayers: Our study, published today in the Journal of the American Medical Association, Internal Medicine was the first to describe daily rhythms in health behaviors. Because trends in quitting contemplations are usually described annually using telephone surveys, we had to use a novel data source that could capture daily patterns. By monitoring aggregate Internet search queries we can see precisely what the population is thinking about by the content of their queries and that the population is engaged in the issue by searching. We therefore analyzed daily search volumes for smoking cessation queries (e.g., "quit smoking") in six languages across the entire globe. We found that people search about quitting smoking more often early in the week, with the highest query volumes on Mondays, using a daily measure representing the proportion of quit smoking searches to all searches. This pattern was consistent across all six languages, suggesting a global predisposition to thinking about quitting smoking early in the week, particularly on Mondays. English searches, for example, showed Monday query volumes were 11 percent greater than on Wednesdays, 67 percent greater than on Fridays, and 145 percent greater than on Saturdays. In total for all six languages, Monday query volumes were 25 percent higher than the combined mean number of searches for Tuesday through Sunday. Practically these findings are very meaningful. For example, in English alone there are about 150,000 more quit smoking queries on Monday than on a typical day; about 8,000,000 over an entire year.

20 Sep

Posted at 12:14h in Author Interviews, Lancet, Smoking

Dr. Chris Bullen MBChB MPH PhD FAFPM FNZCPHM Director School of Population Health, The University of Auckland Private Bag 92019 Auckland 1142, New Zealand Co-Director of the NZ Tobacco Control Research Turanga: A national programme of research to inform rapid smoking prevalence reduction.MedicalResearch.com Interview with:

Dr. Chris Bullen MBChB MPH PhD FAFPM FNZCPHM Director School of Population Health, The University of Auckland Private Bag 92019 Auckland 1142, New Zealand Co-Director of the NZ Tobacco Control Research Turanga: A national programme of research to inform rapid smoking prevalence reduction. Web: http://www.turanga.org.nz/ MedicalResearch.com: What are the main findings of the study? Dr. Bullen:
  • E-cigarettes, with or without nicotine, were modestly effective at helping smokers to quit, with similar levels of abstinence as with nicotine patches, and few adverse events.
  • ?At 6 months, verified abstinence was 7·3% with nicotine e-cigarettes, 5·8% with patches, and 4·1% with placebo e-cigarettes. However, there was insufficient statistical power to conclude superiority of nicotine e-cigarettes to patches or to placebo e-cigarettes.
  • No significant differences in rates of adverse events occurrence were found between the groups.
  • E-cigarettes, like the vapes found at MagicVaporizers, were very popular throughout the trial, with almost 90% of users stating they would recommend them to a friend trying to quit smoking.

06 Aug

Posted at 01:59h in Asthma, Author Interviews, Genetic Research, Smoking, UCLA
MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Virender Rehan, MD Professor of Pediatrics Chief, Division of Neonatology Director, Neonatal Intensive Care Unit Director, Neonatal-Perinatal Fellowship Training Program Co-Director Perinatal Research Center Harbor UCLA Medical Center, David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA Torrance, CA, 90502 MedicalResearch.com: What are the main findings of the study? Dr. Rehan: The main findings of the study include the likelihood of transmission of asthma to third generation offspring following maternal smoking during pregnancy even when child’s mother didn’t smoke. And these effects seem to be more profound in the upper airways of males compared to that in females.

31 Jul

Posted at 01:15h in Author Interviews, Cancer Research, Lung Cancer, Radiology, Smoking
MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Linda L. Humphrey, M.D., M.P.H. Professor of Medicine Informatics and Clinical Epidemiology and Public Health for Oregon Health & Science University;Associate Chief of Medicine at the Portland VA Medical Center Dr. Humphrey comments on this important study on Screening for Lung Cancer With Low-Dose Computed Tomography: Lung cancer is the 3rd leading cause of cancer in the United States and the leading cause of cancer related death.  It is estimated that in 2012 there were 226,160 cases of lung cancer and 160, 340 lung cancer related death in the US.   In addition, lung cancer is the leading cause of years of life lost to cancer.   Cigarette smoking is by far the leading cause of lung cancer in the US and while many people have quit smoking, data in the US indicate that 37% of adults are either current or former smokers and at risk of lung cancer.   

16 Apr

Posted at 22:00h in Author Interviews, Exercise - Fitness, Heart Disease, JAMA, Smoking, Tobacco Research
MedicalResearch.com Author Interview with Dr. Koon Teo, MB, PhD Population Health Research Institute, Hamilton Health Sciences, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada MedicalResearch.com: What are the main findings of the study? Dr. Teo: In this study we examined the prevalence of smoking cessation or avoidance, eating a healthy diet and undertaking regular physical activities in nearly 8000 individuals who had previously experienced a coronary heart disease event or stroke, on average 5 years after their events. The individuals were recruited from over 600 communities in 17 countries with varying incomes and economic development.  We found that although these healthy lifestyle activities could reduce the risk of further heart or stroke events, about one fifth of individuals continued to smoke, only one third undertook regular leisure or work related physical activities and about two fifths ate a healthy diet.

01 Apr

Posted at 23:41h in Author Interviews, Cancer Research, Smoking, University of Pennsylvania
MedicalResearch.com Author Interview: Dr. Steven A. Branstetter, PhD The Pennsylvania State University, 315 E. HHD, University Park, PA 16810.Dr. Steven A. Branstetter, PhD The Pennsylvania State University, 315 E. HHD, University Park, PA 16810. MedicalResearch.com: What are the main findings of the study? Dr. Branstetter: This study demonstrated that the time to the first cigarette of the day after waking is associated with increased levels of a NNAL, a metabolite of a powerful tobacco-specific carcinogen, NNK -- even after controlling for the total number of cigarettes smoked per day. For years, the time to the first cigarette of the day after waking was one of several questions assessing nicotine dependence on the Fagerstrom Test for Nicotine Dependence (FTND), the gold standard questionnaire int he field. Over time, it was found that much of the predictive validity of the FTND was due to the time to first cigarette item. Researchers have found that single time to first cigarette item was highly correlated with other measures of nicotine dependence, and was predictive of more difficulty quitting smoking and increased intake of nicotine. Our current study demonstrates that this behavioral measure, is predictive of exposure to the cancer-causing components of cigarettes, regardless of the total number of cigarettes smoked per day. The results suggest that researchers, clinicians and smokers can assess the level of nicotine dependence and potential cancer risk by looking at the time to the first cigarette of the day after waking.

15 Mar

Posted at 02:17h in Smoking, Tobacco Research

Newswise — SEATTLE – Declines in cigarette smoking among Americans since the mid-1950s – particularly since tobacco-control policies and interventions were implemented after the U.S. Surgeon General’s Report on Smoking and Health was released in 1964 – prevented nearly 800,000 lung cancer deaths between 1975 and 2000, according to a...